Happy Birthday, Lt Fair
by QLGingerBlade
Summary: Cloud visits Zack's grave to wish his old friend a happy birthday. Warnings inside. ONESHOT


**AN: Hello there reader. This is a sadfic, meant to rip your heart out and tear it into pieces, then make it bacon, and feed it to your children and enemies. It contains suicide. I do not think suicide is a good thing, I simply think that Cloud probably wouldn't be able to handle all of the stress that came with being the hero.**

**IF YOU DO NOT LIKE SADFICS, THIS IS NOT YOUR CUP OF TEA.**

**WARNING, IN CASE YOU DIDN'T SEE IT EARLIER: THIS CONTAINS CHARACTER DEATH**** AND ****MENTIONS OF SUICIDE**.

**This fic will not be continued, as it is a oneshot.**

**It has 1,231 words.**

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"_Happy Birthday, Zack._"

The raven in question had been enjoying sitting around in a room in the Lifestream with Genesis, Angeal and Sephiroth, when he heard the words.

He knew this voice. . .

Cloud! Cloud was speaking to him!

"Zack?"

"Huh?"

"What is it?"

"A friend of mine is speaking to me."

"Ah."

"_I did the calculations recently. If I'm not correct, today is not only your birthday, but the anniversary of your death._"

Zack's breath caught in his throat.

"_So. . . I guess this is a bit ironic. The day your were first given life is also the day you lost it._"

Angeal frowned as the smile on Zack's face slid off.

"_And not only is today your birthday, and deathday, it's also the same day that Aeris died._"

Zack stared at the wall across from him, wide-eyed.

"_And guess what else? It's also the same day that Sephiroth died. What a surprise. More people died on this same day._"

Sephiroth couldn't hear what Zack was hearing, but he knew his name had been mentioned, since the boy's eyes had flickered over to him, a sad flash taking over.

"_Someone keeps knocking over your sword. It's the closest thing you have to a grave, and it's starting to piss me off, how often I come back to say hi, and it's just lying on the ground. Maybe it's monsters? I dunno._"

Zack frowned.

"_Anyways, enough about death. . . for now, I guess. I, uh. . . I'm not really sure how to say this. . ._"

Zack's fingers twitched in anticipation, hoping for something good.

"_I saw your parents yesterday._"

Oh no.

"_I had a delivery in the area and stopped to get gas. I had taken off my sunglasses, and your mom came over after seeing my eyes, and asked me if I knew you. And if I did, why you hadn't kept contact in the last several years, and where you had gone after ShinRa had fallen._"

Zack could feel his face tighten at the thought of his mother, withering away, waiting for her long dead son to come back.

"_I. . . I'm sorry, Zack. I wanted to tell her, how you had died a valiant death, saving me and passing on your legacy, but I couldn't do it.__ I couldn't tell her that you were dead, and the only memento left is the Buster. She looked so hopeful, and I just couldn't bring myself to say it._"

The other three men in the room watched Zack's teeth worry into his bottom lip, his hand wrapped in the cloth of his pants, signalling he was trying not to cry.

"_I am such a coward. I can kill Sephiroth three times over, I can defeat Bahamut SIN, I can destroy ShinRa, but I can't tell someone that someone important to them is dead._"

A small trickle of blood fell from Zack's lip, his teeth having bitten down hard enough to bleed.

"_I can't do anything these days. I'm never able to think straight, I always have to think, what would Zack do? He would do this, or that, and I would do it. I never think what would I do. I just can't. I don't know what I was like. Was I smart? What kind of sense of humor did I have? Did I swear? Was I the kind of person who went charging into battle? Or did I wait it out, to see what would happen first?_"

Angeal was getting worried. What was Zack's friend saying? Who was this person?

"_I can't handle the stares, Zack. Everywhere I go, people will point and look at me in awe and fear, whispering about how I killed Sephiroth twice over, destroyed the Remnants, and how I assisted in stopping DEEPGROUND._"

Zack was trembling now, his shoulders shaking as he tried to keep calm.

"_I can tell, Tifa can't handle it either. Nor Vincent, or Yuffie, or Cid, or Reeve, or Rufus and the Turks, the remains of our original crew have stopped keeping in touch with me, maybe because I never kept in touch much with them. I'm sure they're fine without me._"

And Zack started counting the breaths he could hear from Cloud's end to distract himself from the inevitable waterworks. . . nineteen, twenty. . .

"Zack?"

. . .twenty-three, twenty-four. . .

"_Happy birthday, Zack._" Cloud's voice cracked he himself started to cry.

. . . twenty-five. . .

"_Happy birthday. It is the anniversary of your birth, your death. . ._"

. . .twenty-nine. . .

"_Sephiroth's death, Aeris' death. . ._"

. . .thirty-two. . .

"_And soon enough, my own demise shall be on this very same day._"

. . .thirty-seven. . .

"_I'm going to do it._"

Zack lost count and he felt the tears slide down his cheeks, leaving salty trails on his cheekbones.

"_I'm going to kill myself._"

"Oh Goddess, no. . ."

"Zack?!"

"_I know, you probably greatly disapprove, but I just, I don't think I can last much longer without doing this._"

"Please, don't, Cloud."

At that name, Sephiroth gulped, suddenly understanding what was going on. Genesis and Angeal stared at each other, searching for an explanation that neither of them had.

"_I'm sorry Zack. I took the coward's way out. If I'm lucky, I might get to join the Lifestream, finally, after the Planet's consistent attempts to keep me alive._"

"Cloud, no, no, no, no, no!"

Zack was full on sobbing at this point, Angeal drawing him into a hug, and Genesis rubbing Sephiroth's back as his silver-haired friend began to cry for someone that had been his sworn enemy.

There was a click on Cloud's end. A gun. "_I would use this, but, I think it would heal too fast, and last time didn't work._"

Zack kept on saying no, denying that this was happening, he was just dreaming, and he would wake up in the barracks of ShinRa with Cloud still a cadet, unaffected and someone he didn't know, and Genesis and Angeal wouldn't have died, Sephiroth wouldn't have gone insane, none of this had happened, but it did, because you couldn't dream in death.

"_I am going to try to die the most natural way I can. I'll head north, to the city of the Cetra._"

Zack had been crying too much to be able to speak coherently.

"_Goodbye, Zack, and happy birthday._"

_**No. We will not allow this.**_

Zack could hear the Planet protesting the death of their Golden Weapon.

Cloud was at the city sooner than expected, and was in the pool, when the water around him began to crystallize and form an almost flower-like shape around the blond.

_**The Golden Weapon must not die.** _

Cloud was angry, his mind raging as the Planet locked him in a stasis, his swords floating around him in the crystal, and his hair as spiky as ever.

**_You are our most precious, our best._**

His mako-glowing eyes, once a baby blue, fought to stay open.

**_You cannot die._**

He couldn't move his hands.

**_You cannot__ die. _**

He stopped needing to breath.

**_You cannot die._**

He closed his eyes, wondering if this was what death was like.

And Zack kept crying, his tears keeping the crystal's shape.

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**AN: I can tell, people are going to possibly want an explanation. Zack protested Cloud's death so much, that the Planet and the Lifestream agreed. He could not die, as he was their best protection, too precious to lose. As long as Zack wants Cloud to stay alive(he doesn't want him to die, ever) then Cloud will be kept alive, and only awakened when he is needed. He will not be excavated, as the Planet will be smart enough to leave him in plain sight to be interfered with. He will instead be transported to the center of the Planet.**

**Tifa, Barret, Vincent, Yuffie, Cid, Reeve, Rufus, Reno, Rude, Tseng, Elena, Shera, and Shelke will all see him and speak to him while he is in stasis, but I will not write it unless I find the time, and I will put it in a different fic. Feel free to write those if you want, but please credit the original idea back to me.**

**I know it is probably not canon, the times of death, but I put it in the story for the salt in the wounds. Please don't toss rotten vegetables at the author, as that may cause me to want to write less and update my fics later. I am working on the rewrite for Enigma and the next chapter of Lack of Normality, so please wait patiently for those. **

**There is a poll accessible at the top of my profile where you can choose three of the several choices of what I should work on first. Choose wisely.**


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